Ian Zimmerman <itz@???> wrote:

>> Edward, are these sites based in the EU? If it's very little to do
>> with brainwashing -- at least by the site owners -- and everything to
>> do with a cretinous law forcing EU-based sites to warn visitors of
>> cookies.

To be more specific, it's under privacy laws - before a site stores cookies, it must get the users consent. It was ruled that the user failing to set options (if available) in their browser to reject them didn't count as consent - hence all these sites that ask for consent before storing cookies.
Before the rules changes, everyone worked on the basis that "if the user doesn't want cookies then they'll set their browser to block them - therefore if the browser accepts them then the user has consented". I think there was also a "clarification" as before, many tracking (ab)users claimed that cookies weren't "personally identifiable information" which we all know is complete and utter bovine manure.

I've noticed some sites that do it properly - they ask if they can store cookies and the banner remains until you allow it. Others take the other way and tell you that they are going to and leave the site if you don't agree. I'm not sure that these technically comply but I've not heard of any action having been taken against them.

Either way, I'm not sure your average user either understands what a cookie is, or cares about them.

As an aside, I have a personal web site related to another of my interests. It doesn't use cookies at all, but I put code in to warn if there were any cookies accessible by my site - because this was one way of identifying a user abused by Phorm. This found a few sites (Microsoft ones IIRC)using wildcard cookies to allow cross-site logins and stuff (the users got in touch to ask why my site was "blocking" them) !

> Not saying that the policy isn't idiotic - it is. But cookies provide
> the first and most primitive way of tracking, and IMO tracking by
> private entities is indeed a bigger threat than government snooping.
> And I write this in lovely USistan, home of the brave and of the NSA.

+1